Wonton Soup with Vegetables

Here you have some wonton soup with vegetables. I used what I had available at home, it is Sunday and I am too lazy to go out for more authentic ingredients. Basically, I made a chicken stock, boiled wontons (filling from yesterday) and added some finely chopped white cabbage, carrots and spring onions. It was very nice, looks a bit messy but very tasty.

Guotie (Chinese Pot Stickers)

Ok, so it is time for another home made delicacy. Guotie, or Chinese pot stickers, is something that I make now and then. It is basically a fried Gyoza (Yaki Gyoza) with a filling made out of minced pork, spring onions, ginger and sesame oil.

Start of with mixing the pork with about 1/2 cup of  water so that you get a sticky dough. Add chopped spring onions, ginger, sesame oil and some additional seasoning (soy sauce, salt, garlic or whatever you prefer). Take a wrapper, add about 1 tsp of filling and fold using a technique where one side stays flat (youtube: “folding gyoza” or “pot stickers”).  Heat a non-stick pan with peanut oil, add the dumplings, fry for about 1 minute. Add water so that  about 1/3 of the dumpling is covered, steam under lid for about 6 minutes. Remove lid and fry for another 1 minute. The fry-steam-fry procedure makes one side crisp and the other side soft.

Serve with a dip sauce of your choice, I use sweet black vinegar. Enjoy bitches!

Canton House, Olivedalsgatan 12, Gothenburg

My second attempt to find a proper Chinese restaurant in Gothenburg. This time around I opted for a place that markets itself as authentic. For starters I had a sour soup with tofu and chicken. It was tasty but a bit too thick which made question if it is a soup or a sauce. This was followed by some sort of Szechuan beef. It was sweet, a lot of onions and bell peppers, not hot at all. Overall ok, a bit different but lacked a lot of spice and flavour.

Let’s just put it like this, there is no need to go to Gothenburg for Chinese food (or for any other reason, quite a boring town).

Piquant soup with chicken, vanjii mushrooms and tofu.

Chilli woked beef with szechuan vegetables, green pepper and onion.

Yes, the pictures are crap! Please send me a new digital camera!

Ming, Kristinelundsgatan 9, Gothenburg

I was in Gotheburg this week and wanted to sample some of the food the city has to offer. At Ming I ordered Mapo Tofu from the “Chinese” menu. As you can see from the picture, it looks quite nice. However, they did not use enough Szechuan  pepper corns and the sauce itself was just the basic brown sauce from a can. A bit of a disappointment I have to say, why have a Chinese menu and go halfway? 5/10 points.

Akki Sushi, Folkungagatan 45, Stockholm

Spicy Tuna Rolls and Sashimi with Spicy Baby Octopus. DELICIOUS!

Red N Hot, 59 Charing Cross Road, London

Hot Pot (White Soup Base / Hot Chicken Soup Base)

Hot Pot Ingredients: King Prawns, Sliced Fish, Squid, Fish Bolls, Sliced Beef, Sliced Lamb, Tofu, Seaweed, Needle Mushrooms, Chinese Leaves, Potato Slices, Dry Beancurd Sticks, Sweet Potato Noodles, Chinese Cabbage, Baby Squid, Chinese Sausages.

Toku @ The Japan Centre, 212 Piccadilly, London

Salmon Don

Pork and Kimchi Ramen

Royal China, 24-26 Baker Street, London

Sesame Paper Prawn Rolls

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Dip Sauces

Prawn Dumplings

Roasted Pork Buns

Pork and Radish Dumplings

Minced Pork Dumplings with Shrimp

Vegetarian Cheung Fun

Sliced Beed and Preserved Vegetable Noodles

Fresh Prawn and Vegetable Rice

Ramen Seto, 19 Kingly Street, London

Wonton Ramen and Char Siu Ramen

Gyoza

Deep-fried Tofu with Bonito Sauce

Larb (Thai/Lao Meat Salad)

You guys thought I was all about that Chinese stuff, surprise bitches!!!

Ok, so here you have some larb. LOL “larb”. No, seriously – this is a great invention of the Thai/Lao people. There is some sort of dispute between the Lao and Thai people, both claim that the dish originated from their country. You could even say that Larb is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of Asia. I think they should cool down a bit and eat some larb and stop the nonsense arguing! It is a wonderful meat salad that will bring peace to your mind.

The ingredients that I used were minced pork, lime juice, fish sauce, red chilli, ground toasted rice, shallots, coriander, kaffir lime leaves and cabbage. Some recipes also include mint leaves, string beans and thai basil. Obviously I would have used these as well if I had access to the stuff.

You need to roast sticky rice for this. Heat a pan to medium high, add rice and stir until dark brown. Let it cool down and crush it to small pieces in a mortar. You will get some exercise, I would rate the crushing as 2/10 on a muscle building scale. The ground toasted rice is however essential to larb, so do not cheat!

Ok, so now you have your rice powder – great! Add about 1/2 cup of water to a non-stick pan, do not use oil. Bring to boil and add meat. Let cook until the pork turns white. Remove from heat and add sliced shallots, herbs, about 2-3 tsb of fish sauce,  the juice of 1 lime, chilli, sliced kaffir lime leaves, and about 1 tsb of roasted rice. Mix it all together and serve with cabbage. Enjoy y’all!

Mooncakes, Lotus Seed Paste Filling

OMG these mooncakes were totally delicious! I bought them from OMI Food in Stockholm on my previous visit. Apparently they were arranging some sort of mooncake festival and had cakes with different fillings (e.g. lotus seed paste, smoked pork and sweet bean) for sale. All cake boxes were numbered and they wrote the number down on a list when I paid at the counter, strange!

In the pictures (great lights and angles!) you can see the box, a cake and the filling with the moon in the middle (crumbled egg yolk). I had it with coffee, I might have committed a big no-no by doing this but I am not that familiar with Chinese pastries and sweets. OMG delicious! By yourself some mooncakes bitches!

Twice Cooked Pork

It is time for another Szechuan kitchen classic, not as nasty looking as the previous meals perhaps. No, seriously this is also quite nasty because you need to cook pork meat and that is always a disgusting experience because it turns grey and reminds one of a dead animal of some sort.

The recipe calls for the following ingredients: pork belly (as if I could get my hands on that where I live, so I use fat bacon), green and red bell peppers, leek and a mix of sauces and spices. Once again I cheated and bought a spice mix, if I had access to some sort of Chinese super market then I would not commit the spice in a bag sin as much as I have done in this and previous posts. Anyway, the ingredients included pixian bean sauce, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and black bean sauce. Obviously mixing these ingredients separately would be the most ideal thing to do.

Start of with boiling the meat for 20 minutes in about 1 litre of water + 10-20 Szechuan peppercorns. Let the meat rest and cool down, slice into very thin pieces. Heat some peanut oil in a pan, fry the pork for a couple of minutes. Add the sauces and mix together with the pork. Add the vegetables and fry for about one minute. Serve with rice, great stuff!!!

Shuizhu / Water-boiled Chicken

Ok, so this is another Szechuan kitchen classic – Water-boiled meat. I have eaten this dish a couple of times before, it is quite difficult to find in restaurants but if you find yourself seated in a Szechuan joint you would be mad not to order it. Basically it is meat and vegetables boiled in broth with absolutely ridiculous amounts of chilies and Szechuan peppercorns.

The chili paste that I bought was not perfect for this recipe because it lacked the subtle smokey flavour that this dish should have (it reminded me of sambal oelek). I was like “Whatever!?!” when I opened the package and continued on with the dish.

Bring about 1 litre of chicken broth to boil. Add the chili paste and the chicken, leave it and let cook until the meat turns white. Add vegetables and outrageous amounts of Szechuan peppercorns (not six or nine – more like 47). The vegetables that I used were cabbage, lily flowers, ginger, Chinese mushrooms and bamboo shoots . Let it all boil together for a couple of minutes and add salt if needed. Serve in a soup bowl and eat with rice, not on rice!

You can use any meat for Shuizhu, chicken was ok but something with more fat like pork or beef would perhaps be more delicious.

Enjoy your food bitches!

Mapo Tofu

Yes, here we have some Mapo Tofu! This is a great Szechuan dish that will seduce your taste buds and leave you craving for more.

It is easy to make, inexpensive and looks like some sort of puke that you would find on the street on a Sunday morning, lol! No seriously, Mapo Tofu rocks. Read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapo_doufu.

I cheated with a Mapo Tofu spice paste, it is the one in the picture below. I bought the paste in Stockholm where I usually buy all my Asian grocery. What you need is pork, firm tofu, garlic, dried chili, Szechuan peppercorns and rice wine.

Follow these basic steps. Boil the tofu in salted water for some minutes, drain. Heat peanut oil in a pan, add the meat and fry until it turns white. Add the Mapo Tofu paste, garlic, chili, rice wine and Szechuan peppercorns. Blend together and add the tofu + about 1 cup of water. Cover and cook on low heat for about 5 minutes or so. Before serving, add about 2 tbsp of corn starch mixed with about 1/2 cup of water to the dish. Push around the mixture gently, do not stir like a mad man.

Before serving, sprinkle with some more Szechuan peppercorns and try to cover up the mess with something if you feel like it looks disgusting. I ate my Mapo Tofu with rice and Kimchi, it was delicious. Please note that the Szechuan peppercorns are essential to this dish!!! Read more about these hot mamas here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper.

Enjoy bitches!

Korean Style Kimchi

Kimchi! When I eat this delicious crazy dish I always think that God has to be Korean. I mean, you can eat this with whatever is on your plate. I loooooove Kimchi, love love love it! I would easily marry Kimchi if it would be legal.

Ok, so preparing Kimchi is easy. You need some cabbage, ginger, garlic, radish and Kimchi base (I cheat, you can also buy the powder and mix it with some fish sauce). The stuff is in the picture below (I forgot about the garlic, just add some of it).

Cut the cabbage into pieces, about 2 cm. Sprinkle generous amounts of salt all over the cabbage and place in a bowl with a weight on top, keep in room temperature. After 24 hours, rinse with cold water and drain.

Cut the radish, ginger and garlic into smaller sticks (you can also grate the radish). Layer the ingredients in a glass jar, make sure to add the Kimchi stuff. At the end, mix it gently so that the whole thing turns red. Leave the jar in the refrigerator for one week. After this you should have a nice amount of Kimchi! Eat it with everything, if you are a Kimchi addict like me you will start making a new batch very soon. God bless Kimchi!